(May 28) The papers report that sampietrini,
Little Saint Peter Stones, are finally on the way
out. That's what cobble stones are called in these
parts. There is a separate
entry on these delightful little bone and
chassis-rattling darlings. They've been saying they
were going to get rid of them for at least ten
years. (There is another Italian expression with St.
Peter—"Talk about
building St. Peter's!" people murmur, to
mean anything that takes a verrrry long
time to do. I wonder why that just occurred to me.)
Yet they have, indeed, succeeded in repaving with
asphalt some of the streets in Naples. Now via
Marina, the long east-west road along the port is up
for the change. Strangely, there is nostalgia for
cobble stones; they seem to remind people of
horse-drawn carriages and all those quaint and
delightful little things from the good old days--the
Black Plague, the Thirty Years' War, etc. (The
stones are picturesque and will no doubt remain on
those streets where tourists stroll, such as the historic center of town.)
Of course, with today's traffic they pop out of the
road-bed all the time (not the tourists, the cobble
stones) thus pocking the city streets with the more
modern symbol of the bad new days —the pot-hole. Some
holes in the road have been there for so long that
they have taken on anthropological significance,
which fact I cheerfully leave for others to decode;
one near my house was so historic that residents of
the area covered it with flowers and put a
make-shift altar into place, marked with a cross and
scrawled with a prayer for those who had to drive
along the street (image, above, from il Mattino).

(May 30)There is a major battle
looming between the major of Naples, Luigi de
Magistris, and the Superintendent of Culture,
Giorgio Cozzolino. The latter has just signed a
decree closing Piazza del
Plebiscito (photo, right) to events such as
concerts and installation art. Such events have
played prominently in the life of this largest
public square in Naples ever since it was cleared of
cars, spruced up and restored to the city in the
1990s. It has hosted rock music and opera, live
theater, horse shows, New Year's firework displays
and puzzling (but popular) installations
of gigantic works of art. All of this
will cease if Super Art Guy has his way. The mayor
has said: "We respect laws if they make sense. If,
however, they are the result of capriciousness, we
shall take necessary legal steps. The squares of our
city belong to the people and not to bureaucrats...
the people want the spaces in their city—the squares
and parks, the museums—to be open. I will not back
down on this."

(May 31) About halfway throughthis item on Driving in
Naples, there is a comment about coitus
contortius, the art of making love in a Fiat
500 and how "You will need a friend who can
drive a fast motorcycle extremely well, while you
sit on the back and lob water–filled balloons into
parked passionmobiles through the sun–roofs, which
young lovers inevitably leave open." Well,
there really is such a street in Naples
dedicated to life's greatest joy—throwing
water balloons at people. Technically, it's called via
della Rimembranza (Remembrance), nick-named via
della Gravidanza (pregnancy). It's unofficial,
of course. Now there is an official version opening
in Pozzuoli! Yes, friends, for the low, low price of
5 euros for 2 hours and 1.50 for any fraction of the
next hour, you can rent one of the 32 available
walled-off parking spaces (photo, right) and have
privacy without the need to tape newspapers on the
steamed-up windows. The spaces have trash containers
and the house even provides condoms. There is also a
guard at the entrance. (So much for the
water-balloon idea.) Speaking of steamed, the Bishop
of Pozzuoli is upset, and the mayor has said, "No
one asked me about this." The bad news is
that while the free-loaders over on Pregnancy Place
are actually on a very scenic street, the Pitiful
Pit Stop in Pozzuoli is a just few yards from the Solfatara, a foul-smelling
sulfur pit and still active volcano. Well,
geologists say it could happen but probably
won't--at least not till you get there. ("Did the
earth move for you, too, my darling?" "It sure did,
and I'm still taking my shoes off.")

(May 31)Speaking of pit stops, the
Ferrari car company is setting up a Driver and Pit
Crew training village along the seaside this
weekend. There will some famous cars on hand,
including Michael Schumacher's F2002, with which he
won the Formula 1 championship in that year. Most of
the training will be on simulators, of course, so
you won't see any teen-aged (or even middle-aged)
dream chasers putting the pedal to the metal along
the one-mile straight-away of via Caracciolo. (By
the way, the cops are complaining that no one seems
to notice the 30 kph/20 mph speed-limit along that
road. That's insane. People drive 30 kph in my
driveway!) There are a lot of sponsors, and the
event will be flooded with Ferrari paraphernalia,
gizmos and sundry splendid accoutrements—maybe
even t-shirts and bronze rampant horses (the Ferrari
logo). There will also be pit crew competitions. I
have read that a 10-second pit-stop (to refuel and
change four tires) by a professional crew is a tad
slow. The boys of summer this weekend will be
training to see if they can break 10 minutes. By
that time, the race will be over anyway, but you
will have had some fun.

(June 9)A journalist
made three mistakes in one sentence the other
day, a record even for the local fish-wrapper. He
reported that five precious palm trees had been
stolen during the night from our beautiful Botanical Gardens. The
plants, he said, were of the Encephalatros [sic]species. First, they weren't palm trees; they
were cycads (ok, they look like palm trees). Second,
the species is not Encephalatros, it's Encephalartos
[sic]. Maybe that's only two mistakes, but
somehow it looks like three. Other than that, it's a
depressing story. In spite of the participation of
169 nations in the Convention on International Trade
in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, there
is a thriving black market for rare plants. There is
a market for flowers such as orchids, medicinal
plants such as ging-seng and, in the case in point,
cycads, which can bring 15,000 euros per plant on
the black market. The thieves simply scaled the side
wall of the Botanical Gardens at night (it is not
well guarded and maybe not guarded at all) and
removed the plants from their large terracotta
containers and left. It took them about an hour. The
plants are from Africa and are highly valued. Cycads
are one of the oldest plant groups on earth,
surviving over 200 million years of evolution. They
grow slowly and some specimens can be 1,000 years
old. All species of Encephalartos are
endangered. Theft of such plants is clearly not a
random theft of opportunity—"Hey, Mugsy, look over there. No
one is guarding that tree. Let's nab it." They
know what they're doing and have no doubt been
instructed by a botanist: "No, not that one, you
moron. That's Toxicodendron radicans—Poison Ivy, to you!"
These thefts are done to order, most likely the
order of some foreign collector and not a local one.
This is not the first time that the Botanical
Gardens have been hit.

(June 25)Even more bad news for
Bagnoli. After the mob burned down Science City
earlier this year, the North
Pier was about the only place left that
hard-pressed citizens of Bagnoli could rely on to
get away from it all. It was a nice 1-km walk (or
jog or skip) out and back over the sea. It is now
locked. You can't get out there. The sign near the
locked gate says "Please excuse the inconvenience,
but we are waiting for someone at city hall to start
keeping promises." The city of Naples owns 90% of
the shares in Bagnolifutura, the company
charged with breathing new life into the monster
known as Bagnolistein. There are 53 employees who
supposedly work to keep the pier-beast alive. They
are union members who claim they can't even get put
on hold if they try to get through to someone at
city hall for some sort of indication as to wages
and other niceties. "Uh, he's gone for the day" is
about as good as it gets.

(June 25)One of my
favorite places, theThermal
Bath complex in Agnano is on the auction
block. This, according to the local papers, which
accuse the city of selling off the "family jewels."
That is not unexpected given the great wave of
privatization still sweeping Italy even though the
arch-privatizer, Berlusconi, is no longer at the
helm. They tried selling the zoo and got nowhere; no
entrepreneur was willing to take a chance. Now
they've put out the invitation for bids on one of
the loveliest places in the city. It's not really a
sale, but a 30-year lease for one million euros a
year. The lease-holder will have to renovate the
premises, which include the hotel and restaurant
(currently closed), the vast grounds (to include the
installation of a golf course!), restore and
maintain the outdoor pools (now closed), take over
and run a second spa facility on the ground
(currently run privately) maintain the
inhalation-therapy and mud-bath facilities (still
open) that are part of the state-run national health
services, and maintain the adjacent Grotto of the
Dog tourist site as well as the nearby Roman baths
archaeological site. This is a major undertaking,
make no mistake, but since the baths are well-known
internationally, it is not out of the question that
some big-time corporation will take it on. It might
fly. I emphasize might.

(June 25)We had an
unusual "super moon" on Sunday. The moon made
its closest approach to Earth for the 2013 calendar
year, appearing larger and brighter than usual. (The
effect is heightened by the normal "big moon"
optical illusion near the horizon.) This is what it
looked liked over the Bay of Naples just after
moonrise, i.e. about 9 p.m. This remarkable photo
was taken from the top of the street, via Tasso,
overlooking the Mergellina and Chiaia sections of
Naples. The moon has just risen to the south of
Vesuvius over the beginning of the Sorrentine
peninsula. We thank gravity, illusions, the good
weather and, of course, the photographer, Pasquale
Milanese, who was kind enough to let us use his
work.

(June 26) As of this month, Mt. Etna
on Sicily is on the UNESCO
World Heritage list of Natural Sites.
According to Neapolitans, Etna is Italy's "other"
volcano. (I'm sure that Sicilians think our
Vesuvius is the "other" one—and we are all
forgetting the other "other" ones down there in
the Aeolian islands, Stromboli and Vulcano. They
are active). The UNESCO text on Etna is this:

Mt. Etnaphoto by Pequod

Mount Etna is
an iconic site encompassing 19,237
uninhabited hectares on the highest part of
Mount Etna, on the eastern coast of Sicily.
Mount Etna is the highest Mediterranean
island mountain and the most active
stratovolcano in the world. The eruptive
history of the volcano can be traced back
500,000 years and at least 2,700 years of
this activity has been documented. The
almost continuous eruptive activity of Mount
Etna continues to influence volcanology,
geophysics and other Earth science
disciplines. The volcano also supports
important terrestrial ecosystems including
endemic flora and fauna and its activity
makes it a natural laboratory for the study
of ecological and biological processes. The
diverse and accessible range of volcanic
features such as summit craters, cinder
cones, lava flows and the Valle de Bove
depression have made the site a prime
destination for research and education.

Etna is also one of
the 16 so-called Decade Volcanoes (as is Vesuvius),
those identified by the International Association of
Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior as
worthy of special study in light of their history of
large, destructive eruptions and proximity to
populated areas. They are named Decade Volcanoes
because the project was initiated as part of the
United Nations-sponsored International Decade for
Natural Disaster Reduction (proclaimed in 1989).

(There is a lovely
passage about Mt. Etna in D.H. Lawrences Sea
and Sardinia.Click
here to read that.)

(July 24)It's not
even August and The Summer Big Yacht Watching
Festival is in high gear from my living room window.
Notice these two beauties. I didn't get the name of
the larger one at the bottom. I was told it was from
Paraguay, but that may just have been a cover
registry. It left before I managed to confirm that.
(I refuse to say "it sailed." Think of the schooner
you could have built with the same money--and then really
sailed!) The yacht above it appears smaller, but
it's hard to tell since it is farther away. It is,
in fact, the Tatoosh, and is anything
but small. The Tatoosh is a 303-foot (92 m)
private yacht owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul G.
Allen. The Tatoosh was gone this morning. So much
for my plan to put on my bathing trunks and swim out
and complain about Windows 8.

(Sept 24)The BATPETOLA (Bad
Translations from People too Lazy to Ask) award for
the week goes to the anonymous but civic-minded
locals who put up a poster in a coffee bar near my
home pleading with people to take better care of
their city. The Italian was non uccidere Napoli.
That's pretty straightforward: a generic negative
command—non+infinitive verb+
object. Even Google Translator has no problem with
it, so fans of Artificial Intelligence may rejoice.
It spits out an accurate Do Not Kill Naples
(it does not like contractions—I do not
know why) and even a zombie monotone pronunciation.
If the offending translator had done that, then the
phrase would have been correct. But, no, let's take
advantage of that one English lesson from the 1980s
and try to translate smettete di uccidere Napoli.
That one has real problems due to the ambiguity in
the English word for smettere. It means
'stop' as in "Stop doing that," but also as
in "Stop (in order) to do that," giving us a
fierce battle of gerund vs infinitive, an epic
struggle on a scale unmatched since Godzilla vs
Mothra. But, again, Google hangs in there. If you
put in smettere di uccidere, it produces a
correct Stop Killing Naples. No, indeedy,
Mr. Monotone doesn't fall for that trap. Our guy,
however, was too lazy to ask or look it up. Of
course, they didn't need any English at all on the
poster except to generate the "We are so damned
cosmopolitan" effect. I realize there are no lives
at stake here. This not a case of the "crash the
glass" signs on ferry boats down at the port of
Naples telling you how to get the fire extinguisher
in case of an emergency (that was last week's winner
and even then you kind of get the idea). But still—Stop
to Kill Naples? I am going down right this second to
deface the poster with a red marker; next to 'Stop
to Kill Naples,' I'm going to write, "OK, I don't
mind if I do."

(Sept 28)Miracle on
Second Digliano Street: (Thanks to Larry Ray for that title!)

Ido not pass judgment on the miracles
of others. I merely note that on via Monte Faito, in
the Berlingieri section of the Naples suburb of
Secondigliano, up near the airport, an apparition or a
very clever piece of tree rot with an amazing
similarity to Padre Pio has appeared in the bark of a
tree! Once it was reported by a local resident,
someone shouted "miracle," someone else put a flower
and "Don't touch!"-sign at the base of the tree and
yet another cordoned the small lawn space off with
construction-site tape; the traffic then backed up as
everyone drove up there to park and take pictures. A
local resident says that "We live in a section of town
where terrible things can and do happen. Maybe this
means that 'up there' someone is watching out for us."

(Oct 2) The Four Days of
Naples. Every year during the last
week of September, Naples commemorates the
so-called "Four Days [Quattro Giornate]
of Naples," an armed civilian uprising in September
against German forces in the city during WWII. There
is a square in Naples named Quattro
Giornate; there is also a large
memorial at the seaside near Mergellina, and the are
various plaques in place to honor the event. (I
originally mentioned this a few years ago at this link.) There was
also a 1962 film directed by Nanni Loy about the
event. For those who aren't sure exactly what went
on, I have put up at this
link a newspaper report on events in Naples
of that week. It was published on Oct. 1, 1943, the
day that the Allies entered the city of Naples.

(Oct 20) No
comment. There are a number
of iconic snapshots of Naples: the Egg Castle
here, Vesuvius there, and whatever else. There
is one favored by many as representing the
"authentic" life of real people—the web-like
mass of clothes-lines strung from building to
building across the narrow streets. On laundry
day, you can have four or five stories of
bed-sheets and underwear criss-crossed,
fluttering in the breeze and bright sun like
medieval banners—or maybe even medieval
bed-sheets and underwear. Note the words
"web-like." The papers report that a 20-year-old
young man, despondent at unrequited love, threw
himself from the fourth floor of a building on
via Caravaggio yesterday. His fall was broken by
the clothes-lines and he plunged not to his
death but to minor injuries treated at a local
hospital.